Cafeoutdoors.com: Honduras Coup

What's the Chance of Stability?
By Carlos Alberto Montaner

The United States, the OAS, the European Union, Hugo Chávez, Fidel Castro -- most of all, Chávez and Castro -- want Manuel Zelaya immediately restored to the presidency of Honduras. He was expelled from the country on the morning of June 28.

Almost by unanimity, the Honduran Congress, supported by the Supreme Court, had removed him for breaking the law and ignoring the rulings of the Electoral Tribunal. But that was a technical excuse. The deep truth is a lot more dramatic: Zelaya, obstinate and rash, intent on being reelected at any cost, heedless of all the warnings of the judiciary and the legislature, intended to drag the nation in the direction of Chávez, something that in Honduras would have been the beginning of a huge economic and social Via Crucis.

Immediately, the parliamentarians elected as his substitute Roberto Micheletti, a lawyer from Zelaya's own party who, until a few hours earlier, had been president of the legislative chamber. It seems that most Hondurans, including the Christian churches, support the action.

In reality, from a formal point of view, there is nothing surprising in the way Zelaya was removed. It was Congress -- in accord with the Armed Forces, after receiving a resignation letter signed under duress -- that replaced Gonzalo Sánchez de Losada in Bolivia (2003), Abdalá Bucaram (1997), Jamil Mahuad (2000) and Lucio Gutiérrez (2005) in Ecuador, and Jorge Serrano in Guatemala (1993).

In those cases, however, the international community barely paid any attention to the incident. Those were political squabbles that became clashes between the public powers and were resolved by means of a constitutional solution that saved the existing legality. Technically, they were not coups d'état but extreme forms of retaining a vestige of legality. In this case, however, despite the enormous domestic support behind Zelaya's removal, the international reaction has been different.

21st-century socialism

Why? Basically, because the ousted president in recent years had timidly joined (albeit in a rhetorical manner) the so-called ''21st-century socialism,'' a warring ideological family with a large resonance box. The family is directed by Hugo Chávez, who in 1992 was the author of one of the bloodiest military coups in the history of Latin America, but who today, invoking democracy, wasted no time warning that he will overthrow any president who replaces his friend Zelaya.

What we're seeing in Honduras is not a clash between uniformed men and civilians, or between putschists and innocent functionaries. Nor is it a return to the lamentable past of military governments. We are witnessing a conflict between two ways of understanding the function of the state and the role of the political leaders. Chávez's way -- an incipient ruling concept that Zelaya irresponsibly assumed in Honduras -- is a variant of state-run collectivism, a political stream that does away with the separation of powers that is part and parcel of republics. It exalts the personalist style, eliminates replacement of the leader, and adopts anti-Western positions that are expressed in dangerous alliances with countries like Iran and North Korea.

Will Roberto Micheletti's new government be able to stabilize itself? It will all depend on the strength of the bond between the two major political parties, the army and the other institutions of state. It is also possible that Washington will try to forge a compromise between Zelaya and his adversaries whereby the ousted president returns to the country but renounces his intention to change the constitution and to engage in reprisals for the sole purpose of staying on until the November elections.

In any case, participants must walk a narrow line because any mistake could result in a blood bath or the start of a long period of instability and agony. And that's too high a price for one of the poorest countries in Latin America.

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"Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference. The Marines don't have that problem." - President Ronald Reagan

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